Saving a Lot of Bucks by Keeping My Mouth Shut

In the summer of 2002 I made a two week trip to Russia to visit my then fiancée, Bella.

Bella lived in Ryazan, an industrial city that is home to about a half a million people. Since it has little to offer in terms of tourist attractions, few tourists visit. Wanting to make my trip more interesting, Bella checked the local papers and found an ad from one of the new tour companies that had been formed in recent years for a three day, two night bus tour of the Golden Ring a group of nearby cities which, like Ryazan, traced their history back a thousand years.

Again, like Ryazan, each had its Kremlin (fort) at the center with some old churches and simple palaces as well as historical museums. The package included hotel and restaurant accommodations as well as the bus, tour guide and museum passes all for a ruble price per person that worked out to U.S. $90 at the current exchange rate. I wired her $180 and she purchased two tickets.

When I arrived a couple of weeks later she informed me that the bus that was to be used for the tour had broken down and the tour canceled. However, they did have another four day, three night tour package for St. Petersburg and, despite the fact that it was a larger package in terms of both length and distance traveled, she had been able to talk them into substituting that package for the one we had purchased at no extra charge.

The tour started at four in the afternoon with the first night spent traveling to St. Petersburg. While waiting for the tour bus to arrive, Bella casually mentioned "Oh, by the way..." and informed me that the tour company had recognized my name as not being Russian and told her that their tours were designed for Russians, not foreigners. She quickly explained that I had been to Russia before and was familiar with local hotel and restaurant accommodations. She also added that she would translate for me. They then gave her the real reason for their concern about me and that was the fact that hotels and museums had a practice of charging foreigners a higher price than Russians. Given the exchange rate and economic conditions in Russia the higher prices charged foreigners were very competitive compared to those charged in other parts of Europe which left the foreign tourists feeling they had found a very good deal. Further, since most foreign tourists did not speak Russian and did not understand the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, they were completely unaware of the difference.

Since it served the local market, the travel company was under great pressure to keep prices low so that they were affordable for the average Russian. Their profit margin must have been very thin because they were worried that the extra fees that could be charged for my presence would wipe out most of their profit. But they also did not want to lose the $180 we had paid. So they listed me on the tour manifest as Sergi Ivanov and instructed Bella to make sure that I did not give away my nationality by speaking in the hotel lobby or in the museums.

The St. Petersburg tour was great. In the museums I took a moment to study the price signs in the lobby which were posted in Russian, English and German. It didn't take much to see that the rates next to the English and German postings were a little more than twice the those next to the Russian posting. But a quick currency conversion (at that time 30 rubles equaled U.S. $1 so all I had to do was divide the posted ruble rate by 30 to get the dollar value) showed me that it only cost about $3 for foreigners and just under $1 for Russians to visit the museums.

Upon returning to Tucson, the story of my covert side trip was a hit with my colleagues at work. Except for one, Edward, an adjunct instructor who had emigrated from Russia to the U.S. about ten years before. Instead of the usual laugh, Edward became very serious and told me about his experience. Edward is an engineer and when he first came to the U.S. he got a job with a small engineering firm which had just won a contract in Russia. Seeing that Edward was from Russia and spoke Russian, the president of the firm had him join the other two engineers being sent to oversee the project. Not being a U.S. citizen yet, Edward had to use his Russian passport for the trip. Upon arriving he and the other two checked into the hotel. The other two engineers were each charged the ruble equivalent of $25 per night for their rooms. Edward, with his Russian passport, was charged the ruble equivalent of ninety cents per night for an identical room.